An Interview with Sandy Wheeler
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Interview with Sandy Wheeler # FM-V-L-2008-070 Interview # 1: DATE: October 9, 2008 Interviewer: Mark R. DePue COPYRIGHT The following material can be used for educational and other non-commercial purposes without the written permission of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. “Fair use” criteria of Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 must be followed. These materials are not to be deposited in other repositories, nor used for resale or commercial purposes without the authorization from the Audio-Visual Curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, 112 N. 6th Street, Springfield, Illinois 62701. Telephone (217) 785-7955 Note to the Reader: Readers of the oral history memoir should bear in mind that this is a transcript of the spoken word, and that the interviewer, interviewee and editor sought to preserve the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the memoir, nor for the views expressed therein. We leave these for the reader to judge. DePue: Hello. My name is Mark DePue. I’m the Director of Oral History at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library. Today is Thursday, October 9, 2008 and today it is my pleasure to interview Sandy Wheeler. Hi, Sandy. Wheeler: Hello, Mark. DePue: Sandy and I have had a chance to talk before. We talked about your experiences as a very young girl, as a child, growing up while your father was overseas during World War II. It was a lot of fun talking to you about that. So, why are we here today? We’re here today because we want to do a series with Sandy on your experiences running the Rail Golf Classic for twenty- seven years. We’re not going to necessarily get to too much of that today, but like anything we do in life, we bring things to our job because of the experiences we’ve had in the past. Wheeler: So true. DePue: We’re going to talk about those experiences from the time you’re about six or seven years old when daddy came home from the war, up to the time when you step in and take over, at least that’s where we hope to get. Tell me a little bit about your parents. Sandy Wheeler Interview # FM-V-L-2008-070 Wheeler: I’m the daughter of Frederick Vincent and Mona Lutz Dehner. I’m one of four children that my folks had. We lived in Lincoln, Illinois. I’m the only one of the four of us that was born in Lincoln, Illinois. The other three were born in Springfield. DePue: And when were you born? Wheeler: Oh, you had to go there (DePue chuckles). Let’s see if I can remember. Nineteen thirty-nine. So do the math. DePue: We’ll leave it at that. Wheeler: (chuckles) Do the math. Educated at St. Mary’s Grade School in Lincoln, graduated from Lincoln Community High School, went to Lincoln College for a while studying music and subsequently did some more collegiate education down here at Lincoln Land. DePue: What did your parents do for a living? Wheeler: My father and his brother Henry, better known as Heinie Dehner, owned a package liquor store in the Dehner block in Lincoln, Illinois. My great- grandfather built an entire block for his family in Lincoln, so our liquor store, the Dehner Shoe Store, the Dehner Butcher Shop was all in this big block. My mother was a stay-at-home mom until we were all grown and then she went back to what she did before she was married and she was in retailing. DePue: Would you describe your life growing up as a typical one? Wheeler: Very typical. Very strict. Good German parents, good German grandparents who were always there. My grandparents only lived a couple blocks from us, so Mommo and Popo Dehner were always a part of it. Now my grandmother Lutz lived in Springfield, so Springfield was always a part of our lives. My grandfather Lutz and my grandmother Lutz were divorced and Toops, was what we called my grandfather Lutz. It was Mommo, Poppo, Weale and Toops, so those were the grandparents’ names. He moved down to Carrollton, Illinois, so he was a little further away. DePue: Were any of these first generation Americans? Wheeler: No. DePue: Okay, so it goes back a little further than that. Wheeler: It goes back a little further than that. We’ve had a little trouble – my middle daughter, Kimberly, is the genealogist in the family and she’s so far into it. She is educated as a lawyer, but she’s now becoming certified as a genealogist. She’s really into it. She’s had a little better luck getting her father’s lineage than the Dehners and the Lutz. 2 Sandy Wheeler Interview # FM-V-L-2008-070 DePue: Anything else about your childhood? I think you started singing fairly early on, did you not? Wheeler: I did. Mother saw to it that we all took piano lessons, so music started early in our lives and we had a choir that sang at St. Mary’s and the organ player discovered that I had a voice and I was only about eight years old. DePue: Did he discover you had a talent for playing the piano and organ? Wheeler: It was a she. I took my lessons from a nun, Sister Mary Charlotte, and ultimately, I played the organ at St. Mary’s Church. I used to sing mass almost every day and as the years progressed with singing, by the time I was twelve I was singing weddings and funerals and I had a mature voice with a bravado at a very, very early age. DePue: Did you like it? Wheeler: Loved it, loved it. DePue: What was it that you loved about it? Wheeler: Well, finding out there was a voice there and being able to sing beautiful music and it wasn’t bad that so many people would tell me how good I was, excuse me (laughs). DePue: Did you like the attention it gave you? Wheeler: Well, of course. DePue: Was there somebody else in the family who had some musical talent? Wheeler: My sister Sharon could have been a concert pianist. She played beautifully. Unfortunately, she didn’t have what we call in the Dehner family the moxie to perform for people. She would just go to pieces. She was so, so talented and played all of the things, Prelude in C-sharp minor, she played Chopin, she played Schubert. Gorgeous, just gorgeous, but she just couldn’t. When we were in high school she would audition to go to contest and she couldn’t even get through the audition at school. It was very sad to me. DePue: It sounds though like she wanted to be successful at it. Wheeler: Oh, of course. DePue: How much was this a reflection of what your parents wanted the two of you to do? Wheeler: It is exactly what our parents wanted us to do. Sharon would be at the piano at 7 a.m. every morning practicing, but she loved it. I think it was very, very 3 Sandy Wheeler Interview # FM-V-L-2008-070 sad for her not to be able to take it to that performance level. Me, just give me a crowd. (laughs) DePue: So you had what they say, moxie. Wheeler: I had the moxie. I wish I could have given her, I think I only need half of what I had (laughs). I think if Sharon had had half of it she’d have gone on. DePue: Do you think she had more talent musically, or different talent? Wheeler: Entirely different. I played the piano, too, but I would never, ever get close to her ability. She could sing, but she didn’t have my voice. DePue: Let’s get into the high school years. At that time, what would you say you wanted to do with you life? Wheeler: Sing, twirl my baton, not too interested in academics (laughs), which was very difficult for my parents. I was in thespians, which is the acting club. If we had had Title 9 back when I was a student, I’d have been an athlete. I loved playing basketball, I was a great runner, just all these things, all these extracurricular things were really what kept me going. DePue: But not the academics, necessarily? Wheeler: Well, you know, if I had applied myself, I think that I probably would have been a straight A student, but I was the only freshman ever admitted to both the mixed chorus and the girls chorus. That was very important to me. I was a baton twirler with the marching band. DePue: Were you getting some professional training for voice? Wheeler: I was also singing in the Lincoln College choir, which basically was an adult choir. I was about fourteen, fifteen at the time. The director’s name was Bill Tagg and I had to audition for him and he put me in the choir. He went to my home and met with my mother and father and said, “I want to train your daughter.” Well, my folks really didn’t have money for singing lessons, so we traded. I babysat for his kids and he gave me singing lessons. But the worst part of that was, you know for many years, people had been telling me how good I was, how wonderful I was and patting me on the back.